Systemd Journald and audit logging causing journal issues
Brad Zynda
bradley.v.zynda at nasa.gov
Tue Oct 17 17:13:36 UTC 2017
Hi Steve,
Thanks for pointing me in the right direction and including the 2 year
old ticket to reference ;)
I will see about getting the audit.socket masked if it is allowed under
FIPS/NIST.
Thanks again,
Brad
On 10/17/2017 12:25 PM, Steve Grubb wrote:
> On Tuesday, October 17, 2017 11:40:12 AM EDT Brad Zynda wrote:
>> Hey Steve,
>>
>> No problem you guys are busy with updates..
>>
>> So I kind of stepped into a known issue with a current disagreement
>> between the 2 maintainers?
>
> Its not a disagreement. Its systemd wants to do everything. Its a crond/
> xinetd/syslogd/auditd/core dump collector/udev/login service/fstab/fs
> automounter/container manager/file system monitor/resource manager/daemon
> watchdog and oh by the way, it does init.
>
>
>> what can be done to resolve this going
>> forward as it is killing services in production environments?
>
> End users have to take the situation into their own hands. There are
> configuration knobs for a reason. More info here:
>
> https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1227379
>
>
>> I agree with the need not to remove auditing as this is a slippery slope
>> and should not occur but the decision was based on little documentation
>> in regards to the problem and loss of service, I will look at further
>> checking in hopes to find the specific rule. Though I think the latter
>> to fix the issue is the appropriate avenue.
>
> Figuring out which rule is triggering is the best solution. It may turn out
> you just have a busy system. But most of the time its a bad rule.
>
>> The rules have been put in place across many organizations that check
>> with tools like CIS-CAT and OSCAP, so a lot of rules and a point of
>> possible single failure.
>
> They make mistakes, too.
>
>> In regards to the audit.socket what is the expected outcome of masking
>> this service?
>
> The expected outcome is that journald stops getting audit records. It doesn't
> solve the problem of why you are getting so many events. Fixing the rule does
> that.
>
> -Steve
>
>> On 10/17/2017 11:25 AM, Steve Grubb wrote:
>>> Hello,
>>>
>>> I apologize for the late reply...just found the message.
>>>
>>> On Monday, October 2, 2017 1:30:19 PM EDT Brad Zynda wrote:
>>>> I am sending along an issue brought to the systemd-journald dev list
>>>> initially:
>>>>
>>>> On 10/02/2017 11:40 AM, Lennart Poettering wrote:
>>>>> On Mo, 02.10.17 11:25, Brad Zynda (bradley.v.zynda at nasa.gov) wrote:
>>>>>> Sep 28 13:50:03 server systemd-journal[565]: Suppressed 73244 messages
>>>>>> from /system.slice/auditd.service
>>>>>
>>>>> The question is: why does auditd even log to the journal?
>>>
>>> It doesn't. I have had many arguments with the systemd people about
>>> polluting syslog with audit events. If we wanted audit events there, we
>>> would have wrote them there. The journal is listening on a multicast
>>> audit socket that was created just for them and using a posix capability
>>> that was created just for them. And journal also turns on auditing even
>>> if you didn't want it. In short, they have, with intention, created your
>>> problem.
>>>
>>>>>> Now we are required to have full audit rules and does this look like at
>>>>>> rate limiting issue or an issue of journal not able to handle the
>>>>>> traffic to logging?
>>>>>
>>>>> journald detected that it got flooded with too many messages in too
>>>>> short a time from auditd. if this happens then something is almost
>>>>> certainly off with auditd, as auditd is not supposed to flood journald
>>>>> with messages, after all it maintains its own auditing log database.
>>>
>>> No...that's the way it works. If you want the audit stream, you have to be
>>> able to handle it. My suggestion is that we have a separation of duties.
>>> Auditd has audit events, journal has syslog. Besides, mixing audit and
>>> syslog data means the security officer and system admin roles have been
>>> combined. I think there is an audit.socket unit file that can be masked.
>>>
>>>>> Please ping the auditd folks for help
>>>
>>> They created the problem of audit events in syslog. That said, its been my
>>> experience that whenever you get lots of events, there may be something
>>> wrong with your rules.
>>>
>>> The normal technique to figure out what wrong is to run aureport --summary
>>> --key during the time range of the flood to see what rule is triggering.
>>> Then we can look at that rule to see if there's something wrong with it.
>>>
>>> More below...
>>>
>>>> Hey Everyone,
>>>>
>>>> Not sure if this is a bug so:
>>>>
>>>> systemctl status -l systemd-journald.service
>>>> ● systemd-journald.service - Journal Service
>>>>
>>>> Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/systemd-journald.service;
>>>>
>>>> static; vendor preset: disabled)
>>>>
>>>> Active: active (running) since Tue 2017-09-26 20:01:16 UTC; 5 days ago
>>>>
>>>> Docs: man:systemd-journald.service(8)
>>>>
>>>> man:journald.conf(5)
>>>>
>>>> Main PID: 565 (systemd-journal)
>>>>
>>>> Status: "Processing requests..."
>>>> CGroup: /system.slice/systemd-journald.service
>>>>
>>>> └─565 /usr/lib/systemd/systemd-journald
>>>>
>>>> Sep 28 13:50:03 server systemd-journal[565]: Suppressed 73244 messages
>>>> from /system.slice/auditd.service
>>>> Sep 28 13:51:03 server systemd-journal[565]: Suppressed 98979 messages
>>>> from /system.slice/auditd.service
>>>> Sep 28 13:52:03 server systemd-journal[565]: Suppressed 109433 messages
>>>> from /system.slice/auditd.service
>>>> Sep 28 13:53:03 server systemd-journal[565]: Suppressed 99788 messages
>>>> from /system.slice/auditd.service
>>>> Sep 28 13:54:03 server systemd-journal[565]: Suppressed 111605 messages
>>>> from /system.slice/auditd.service
>>>> Sep 28 13:55:03 server systemd-journal[565]: Suppressed 111591 messages
>>>> from /system.slice/auditd.service
>>>> Sep 28 13:56:03 server systemd-journal[565]: Suppressed 107947 messages
>>>> from /system.slice/auditd.service
>>>> Sep 28 13:57:51 server systemd-journal[565]: Suppressed 32760 messages
>>>> from /system.slice/auditd.service
>>>> Sep 28 17:21:40 server systemd-journal[565]: Suppressed 210 messages
>>>> from /system.slice/auditd.service
>>>> Oct 01 02:16:01 server systemd-journal[565]: Suppressed 1333 messages
>>>> from /system.slice/auditd.service
>>>>
>>>> journalctl --verify
>>>> PASS: /run/log/journal/d28b0080ffe0432a974f36e4fb4bfa9b/system.journal
>>>> PASS:
>>>> /run/log/journal/d28b0080ffe0432a974f36e4fb4bfa9b/system at 0d49221d68d04ef0
>>>> b95 d8203c5e96a46-000000000097f6c7-0005596b745b4d1c.journal PASS:
>>>> /run/log/journal/d28b0080ffe0432a974f36e4fb4bfa9b/system at 0d49221d68d04ef0
>>>> b95 d8203c5e96a46-000000000096a587-00055966f35ae59a.journal PASS:
>>>> /run/log/journal/d28b0080ffe0432a974f36e4fb4bfa9b/system at 0d49221d68d04ef0
>>>> b95 d8203c5e96a46-00000000009554f1-000559629c4cdb7e.journal PASS:
>>>> /run/log/journal/d28b0080ffe0432a974f36e4fb4bfa9b/system at 0d49221d68d04ef0
>>>> b95 d8203c5e96a46-0000000000940591-0005595e1811a2d1.journal PASS:
>>>> /run/log/journal/d28b0080ffe0432a974f36e4fb4bfa9b/system at 0d49221d68d04ef0
>>>> b95 d8203c5e96a46-000000000092b500-00055959f2de5ede.journal PASS:
>>>> /run/log/journal/d28b0080ffe0432a974f36e4fb4bfa9b/system at 0d49221d68d04ef0
>>>> b95 d8203c5e96a46-0000000000916479-0005595573137b74.journal PASS:
>>>> /run/log/journal/d28b0080ffe0432a974f36e4fb4bfa9b/system at 0d49221d68d04ef0
>>>> b95 d8203c5e96a46-0000000000901337-00055950d80cc3d8.journal PASS:
>>>> /run/log/journal/d28b0080ffe0432a974f36e4fb4bfa9b/system at 0d49221d68d04ef0
>>>> b95 d8203c5e96a46-00000000008ec2fb-0005594cad14b07a.journal PASS:
>>>> /run/log/journal/d28b0080ffe0432a974f36e4fb4bfa9b/system at 0d49221d68d04ef0
>>>> b95 d8203c5e96a46-00000000008d7373-0005594838683e58.journal PASS:
>>>> /run/log/journal/d28b0080ffe0432a974f36e4fb4bfa9b/system at 0d49221d68d04ef0
>>>> b95 d8203c5e96a46-00000000008c238e-00055943fe2072e3.journal PASS:
>>>> /run/log/journal/d28b0080ffe0432a974f36e4fb4bfa9b/system at 0d49221d68d04ef0
>>>> b95 d8203c5e96a46-00000000008ad1d9-0005593ff64a4f69.journal PASS:
>>>> /run/log/journal/d28b0080ffe0432a974f36e4fb4bfa9b/system at 0d49221d68d04ef0
>>>> b95 d8203c5e96a46-0000000000897f32-0005593e18c5758b.journal
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> journalctl --disk-usage
>>>> Archived and active journals take up 1.1G on disk.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Initially we saw:
>>>> 16733 PATH
>>>> 5070 SYSCALL
>>>> 5024 CWD
>>>> 3765 AVC
>>>> 323 CRYPTO_KEY_USER
>>>> 223 USER_START
>>>> 222 USER_ACCT
>>>> 222 CRED_ACQ
>>>> 220 LOGIN
>>>> 220 CRED_REFR
>>>> 218 USER_END
>>>> 218 CRED_DISP
>>>> 46 USER_LOGIN
>>>> 12 EXECVE
>>>> 4 USER_AUTH
>>>> 2 CRYPTO_SESSION
>>>> 1 USER_ROLE_CHANGE
>>>> 1 USER_CMD
>>>> 1 SERVICE_STOP
>>>> 1 SERVICE_START
>>>> 1 BPRM_FCAPS
>>>>
>>>> so we blocked type PATH in audit.rules
>>>
>>> This is not the right thing to do. If a security officer asks what is
>>> being
>>> accessed, you got rid of the information. The right thing is to figure out
>>> which rule is being hit and see if something is wrong with it. For
>>> example, I have seen people do this:
>>>
>>> -a always,exit -S open,openat -F exit=-EPERM
>>>
>>> The problem is that they did not restrict the rule an architecture and
>>> they
>>> were getting lots of events for the wrong syscall. I've also seen people
>>> add -F success 0 to an open syscall. This also results in a large number
>>> of events.
>>>
>>> So, I'd recommend making sure all rules have keys added and the running
>>> the
>>> key summary report to see what rule needs inspection.
>>>
>>> If you find the rule that's causing the problem and you want an opinion,
>>> send it to the mail list.
>>>
>>> -Steve
>>>
>>>> But we are still seeing 100K of dropped/suppressed messages.
>>>>
>>>> Note: systemloglevel = INFO
>>>>
>>>> Centos 7 1708 3.10.0-693.2.2.el7.x86_64
>>>>
>>>> systemd.x86_64 219-42.el7_4.1
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Now we are required to have full audit rules and does this look like at
>>>> rate limiting issue or an issue of journal not able to handle the
>>>> traffic to logging?
>>>>
>>>> Error we are seeing from services that have silently failed, in this
>>>> case glassfish..
>>>>
>>>> systemctl status -l glassfish
>>>> ● glassfish.service - SYSV: GlassFish start and stop daemon
>>>>
>>>> Loaded: loaded (/etc/rc.d/init.d/glassfish; bad; vendor preset:
>>>> disabled)
>>>>
>>>> Active: active (exited) since Tue 2017-09-26 20:01:36 UTC; 5 days ago
>>>> Docs:
>>>> man:systemd-sysv-generator(8)
>>>>
>>>> Process: 1328 ExecStart=/etc/rc.d/init.d/glassfish start (code=exited,
>>>>
>>>> status=0/SUCCESS)
>>>>
>>>> Warning: Journal has been rotated since unit was started. Log output is
>>>> incomplete or unavailable.
>>>>
>>>> Eventually glassfish will fail but it wont kill the service so we never
>>>> get an nms service down trap from the OID.
>>>>
>>>> Please let me know if further info is needed or if certain limits need
>>>> to be adjusted.
>>>>
>>>> Thanks,
>>>> Brad Zynda
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> Linux-audit mailing list
>>>> Linux-audit at redhat.com
>>>> https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/linux-audit
>
>
>
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